Why So Many Laws - Mishpatim

“Many people think of Judaism as the religion of cold, harsh laws, to be contrasted with Christianity, the religion of love and brotherhood. This is an unfair characterization of both Judaism and Jewish law. Laws are at the heart of Judaism, but a large part of Jewish law is about love and brotherhood, the relationship between man and his neighbors. Jewish law commands us to eat only kosher food, not to do forbidden work on shabbat, and not to wear wool woven with linen; but it also commands us to love all Jews (and converts in particular), to give aid to the poor and needy, and to do no wrong to anyone in speech or in business. In fact, acts of love and kindness are so much a part of Jewish law that the word "mitzvah" (literally, "commandment") is commonly used to mean any good deed...”
excerpted from:
“Love and Brotherhood“, Mechon-Mamre.org

Two Questions: 1. Why are there so many Laws? There are so many cultures with spiritual practices that are much simpler without so many moving parts as Judaism, why do we need so many details? 2. Some of the laws seem too mundane to bother G-d? Why would G-d care if I start Shabbat at 5:01 on a particular Friday evening? YK

My wife and I once (November, 2004) spent a week at Pransky and Associates in La Conner, Washington. It was a very impactful experience for both of us as we were mentored in the Three Principles which are at there core of their model for healthy living. My mentor spent several hours a day with me during that week and at one point when we were at the mindful state that was the goal of our session he asked me: Now that you see the world from this place and it is clear that when you are experiencing life grounded in this way you are your best self and have access to infinite wisdom why would you need anything more (the rules and laws of Judaism)? He wasn’t proselytizing, he was genuinely curious. My response in the moment and from that place of awareness was that if I was only concerned about my own personal wellbeing and awakening spiritual awareness I saw his point, but I am part of a community and my fulfillment is only realized within that community. You can’t work together for a greater good without rules. Villages, cities, and Condo Boards all understand that a wise set of rules is essential for successful living in community. YK

“John C. REILLY: ...The brilliant thing about their work - when you watch it, it seems so nonchalant. It seems like they're doing it for the first time. And you know that some of these routines, like the double door routine you mentioned in our movie where we keep missing each other, going out one door, coming out - it was two, like - a waiting room in a railway station is the way we did it on stage.
And in order to get that comedy to look right so it just looks like we're just accidentally missing each other 15 times in a row (laughter) - in order to do that, it requires this diligence with the timing. And it's almost like a ballet or a piece of music that you're playing when you're doing it because what looks like very nonchalant just kind of like normal human behavior from the outside, inside is Steve and I going, five, four, three, two, turn. Wait - two, three, turn - right? So it's almost like this choreographed thing in our mind.”
excerpted from: Fresh Air, John C. Reilly On The Comedy Of Laurel And Hardy: 'It's Almost Like A Ballet'
By DAVE DAVIES • JAN 15, 2019

“'My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time I tell you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one way to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just like A B C.
...By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the river, I had learned to be a tolerably plucky up-stream steersman, in daylight, and before we reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of progress in night-work, but only a trifle. I had a note-book that fairly bristled with the names of towns, 'points,' bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc.; but the information was to be found only in the notebook--none of it was in my head. It made my heart ache to think I had only got half of the river set down; for as our watch was four hours off and four hours on, day and night, there was a long four-hour gap in my book for every time I had slept since the voyage began...
...When I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis was gone and I was lost. Here was a piece of river which was all down in my book, but I could make neither head nor tail of it: you understand, it was turned around. I had seen it when coming up-stream, but I had never faced about to see how it looked when it was behind me. My heart broke again, for it was plain that I had got to learn this troublesome river both ways...
... “Oh, don’t say any more please! Have I got to learn the shape of the river according to all these five hundred thousand different ways? If I tried to carry all that cargo in my head it would make me stoop-shouldered.'
'No! you only learn the shape of the river, and you learn it with such absolute certainty that you can always steer by the shape that's in your head, and never mind the one that's before your eyes.'...
...'How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-the-Wall, trip before last?'
I considered this an outrage. I said;
'Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing through that tangled place for three-quarters of an hour on a stretch. How do you reckon I can remember such a mess as that?'
'My boy, you've got to remember it. You've got to remember the exact spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had the shoalest water, in everyone of the five hundred shoal places between St. Louis and New Orleans; and you mustn't get the shoal soundings and marks of one trip mixed up with the shoal soundings and marks of another, either, for they're not often twice alike. You must keep them separate.'...
... The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkingly renewed with every re-perusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an italicized passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it; for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to a pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter.”
Excerpted from: Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, chapters 5-10, Classicreader.com